Gettysburg

by Stephen W. Sears

  Buford’s design for a defense in depth was to make it a fight for time. He intended his main line of resistance to be McPherson’s Ridge—William Gamble’s brigade would hold the line south of the Chambersburg Pike and Tom Devin’s brigade north of it—but not before he resisted the enemy’s initial advance steadily and stubbornly and well forward. He had to force the Confederate infantry to take the time, under fire, to deploy in full line of battle.

  The 550 troopers on Buford’s advanced skirmish line poured out so rapid a fire that cavalryman Dana claimed, with pardonable exaggeration, that it “induced the belief of four times the number actually present.” The cavalry’s breechloading carbines, with a faster rate of fire than an infantryman’s rifle, contributed to this impression, and the guns of Lieutenant John H. Calif’s horse artillery added to the din. General Heth had wanted to keep his troops advancing apace in column along the Chambersburg Pike, clearing the way with just a skirmish line, but the Yankee cavalry’s stiff resistance ended that hope. Heth was forced to halt the column and deploy Archer’s and Davis’s brigades, an exercise that consumed some 90 minutes.12

  It was about 9 o’clock when the Confederates in full battle array started forward against Herr’s Ridge. James J. Archer’s Alabamians and Tennesseans were on the right, south of the Chambersburg Pike. Joe Davis’s Mississippians and North Carolinians were on the left, north of the pike. Their line of battle, some 2,900 strong, was almost a mile wide. The line of Yankee troopers, essentially a reinforced picket line, had done its job well and gained General Buford a good two hours and more, but now it was time to go. Slowly, turning back to fire, the troopers drifted down the slope of Herr’s Ridge, splashed across Willoughby Run, and joined the cavalry’s main line on McPherson’s Ridge.

  On July 1 Henry Heth, left, led his Confederate division against Union cavalryman John Buford. (Valentine Museum-National Archives)

  From the crest of Herr’s Ridge, Harry Heth now surveyed the scene before him and came to a momentous decision. He phrased the moment in his report: “it became evident that there were infantry, cavalry, and artillery in and around the town.” This was what he had been sent to Gettysburg that morning by corps commander Hill to find out—what enemy lay in front of them. If General Heth’s analysis of the enemy before him was something less than accurate—just then he was confronted not by infantry but by two dismounted cavalry brigades and a battery of horse artillery—the error was understandable. These Yankees surely acted like infantry. But what had to be evident beyond any doubt—from the presence of the artillery, if nothing else—was that this was the Army of the Potomac. Furthermore, it was an Army of the Potomac showing no signs of backing away.

  In the spirit of General Lee’s orders—the instructions to Heth on June 30 not to bring on a general engagement may or may not have been repeated to him on July 1 (the record is ambiguous), but certainly they had not been rescinded—General Heth should have broken off the action at this convenient stopping point and withdrawn to Cashtown to report his findings. Alternatively, he might have held the good high ground on Herr’s Ridge and sent back to A. P. Hill for consultation and further orders. Instead, he ordered Archer and Davis “to move forward and occupy the town.”

  This was a reckless act, in no way justified by Heth’s claim in his report that at the moment “I was ignorant what force was at or near Gettysburg….“In fact he knew there was force in front of him, he saw that it intended to dispute his advance, and as a mere division commander on a reconnoitering mission he was bound to report his findings to a superior before he charged headlong into battle (or as he later put it, with unintended irony, “stumbled into this fight”). In so doing, Harry Heth committed to his half share of responsibility for bringing on the Battle of Gettysburg.

  At about the same time, less than a mile to the east, John Reynolds was committing to his own half share of responsibility for the battle. General Reynolds had at least been delegated the authority for making such a decision.13

  DURING THESE EARLY-MORNING hours of July 1, from the cupola of the Lutheran Theological Seminary on Seminary Ridge, Federal signalman Aaron Jerome tracked the expanding fight in front of him, and in turn with his strong glass anxiously scanned to the southeast for Reynolds’s corps. At last, on the distant Emmitsburg Road, he sighted a column of troops. Jerome promptly reported his sighting to General Buford, who knew from his returned courier that this had to be the First Corps. With that, at a few minutes after 10 o’clock, Buford wrote out a dispatch for General Meade. He announced that the Rebels were “driving my pickets and skirmishers very rapidly.” He was certain the whole of A. P. Hill’s corps was advancing on him from the west, and that from the direction of Heidlersburg to the north another “large force” was driving in his pickets. Help was on the way, however: “General Reynolds is advancing, and is within 3 miles of this point with his leading division.”

  After receiving Buford’s earlier note on the march, Reynolds with several of his staff had left the infantry column and ridden hard for Gettysburg. Just before reaching the town, they encountered a fleeing, badly frightened civilian, who gasped out the news that the cavalry was in a fight. They galloped on into Gettysburg where, noted Reynolds’s orderly Charles Veil, “there was considerable excitement,” then hurried on out the Chambersburg Pike in search of Buford. They found him on McPherson’s Ridge with his men. Buford explained the cavalry’s dispositions and his defense-in-depth plan, and Colonel Gamble expressed the urgency, calling out to Reynolds, “Hurry up, General, hurry up! They are breaking our line!” According to Sergeant Veil, “The General ordered Genl. Buford to hold the enemies in check as long as possible, to keep them from getting into town….”

  To deliver a message of his own to Meade, Reynolds called on his aide Stephen Weld. Captain Weld was to say to the general commanding that “the enemy were coming on in strong force, and that he was afraid they would get the heights on the other side of the town before he could; that he would fight them all through the town, however, and keep them back as long as possible.”

  Weld was told to ride with all speed, to ride his horse to death if he had to, and he delivered the message to headquarters in Taneytown by about 11:30 A.M. This was ahead of Buford’s courier, and Weld reported that General Meade “was very much disturbed indeed at the receipt of the news. He said, ‘Good God! If the enemy get Gettysburg, we are lost!’” But when Weld went on to tell of Reynolds’s promise to barricade the streets of the town and hold back the Confederates as long as he could, Meade exclaimed, “Good! that is just like Reynolds.“14

  After dispatching Weld on his mission, ordering Howard to advance the Eleventh Corps with all speed, and sending to Sickles to bring up the Third Corps from Emmitsburg, Reynolds spurred back through the town and out the Emmitsburg Road toward the head of the First Corps column. He had his aides tear down the roadside fences so that the men and guns could cut across the fields to bypass Gettysburg and reach the front more quickly. He showed not the slightest hesitation in committing the First Corps to battle.

  John Reynolds’s decision, for all its promptness, was surely made with calculation—and surely with more calculation than Harry Heth’s decision. On the Emmitsburg Road Reynolds had passed close by the high ground south of Gettysburg and, like John Buford, took note of its defensive possibilities. He promised Meade he would “fight them all through the town” to hold that ground. A. P. Hill’s whole corps might be advancing on Gettysburg along the Chambersburg Pike, as Buford believed, but by all appearances the Confederates were marching only on that single road and thus would not be able to push their forces to the front any faster than Reynolds could reach the battlefield with his First Corps divisions. Buford warned of a possible threat from the north as well, and

  that appeared to be the major risk. Yet there was the Eleventh Corps on the march, just behind the First, to counter that threat. And if Meade should second the decision, the Third and Twelfth corps were within marching range.

>   Certainly there was risk here, but on the evidence of the moment it was reasonable risk. Reynolds recognized this as what the military textbooks called a meeting engagement. Battle was unintended; neither side held an immediate advantage; everything depended on which side marshaled its forces most quickly and efficiently. In any event, General Reynolds as a matter of principle was more than willing to give battle that morning. All his aggressive instincts as a soldier were aroused. Abner Doubleday, one of the First Corps’ division commanders, remembered Reynolds being “inflamed” a few days before on learning that the Rebels were plundering his native state. He was “in favor of striking them as soon as possible. He was really eager to get at them.” Gettysburg looked like a good place to get at the enemy. John Reynolds, granted the discretion to act, accepted the risk and the responsibility.

  Reynolds’s most urgent need just then was to get his lead division, under James Wadsworth, to McPherson’s Ridge to relieve Buford’s hard-pressed troopers. Lysander Cutler’s brigade—one Pennsylvania and four New York regiments—was at the head of the column, followed by Captain James A. Hall’s 2nd Maine battery, and Reynolds directed them to march cross-lots with all speed. For a time he sat his big black charger at the roadside turnoff, an inspiriting figure directing traffic into the fields, letting the men see the general who was pointing them to battle. When Reynolds had everyone in motion, he spurred ahead to put Cutler’s troops and Hall’s guns into position personally.15

  Behind them came Wadsworth’s other brigade, the famous Iron Brigade, commanded by Solomon Meredith. Like the rest of the column, these five western regiments—2nd, 6th, and 7th Wisconsin, 19th Indiana, 24th Michigan—had been marching along peacefully on this hot morning, with no expectation of any action that day. There had been a flutter of excitement in the ranks at the rumor that General McClellan was back in command of the army, but like most army rumors it faded quickly. The 6th Wisconsin’s Lieutenant Colonel Rufus Dawes had just unfurled the colors and told his drum major to play “The Campbells are Coming,” so as to “make a show” on entering Gettysburg, when shells were seen bursting west of the town. Soon enough the word was passed from General Meredith to follow Cutler’s brigade and to waste no time about it.

  On McPherson’s Ridge Reynolds posted Hall’s Maine battery between the Chambersburg Pike and the railroad cut north of the road. It was a dangerously exposed position, Reynolds admitted, but the crisis required it. With the separate sections of Calif’s horse battery outgunned and forced to withdraw, Hall’s six 3-inch rifles were all there was at the moment to challenge the Rebel artillery. Hall was told he must distract the enemy gunners so the infantry would not have to deploy under damaging artillery fire. Reynolds told Wadsworth to put in Cutler’s infantry specifically to protect the battery, then rushed off to hurry the rest of the infantry deployment. In these critical minutes wing commander Reynolds was playing the role of a general of division, even of brigade.16

  It would be reported, when Archer’s Tennesseans and Alabamians suddenly confronted the Iron Brigade, that one of the Rebels grumbled, “There are those damned black-hatted fellows again! ‘Taint no militia.” Whether actually expressed, it must have been a common thought, for the black-hatted fellows were an all-too-familiar sight to the Army of Northern Virginia. These westerners, refugees from John Pope’s Army of Virginia, had been taken in hand by John Gibbon and made into one of the best-known fighting outfits in the Potomac army. They had gained their sobriquet in the Antietam campaign and burnished it in all the fighting since, and liked to think they had earned their lofty status: First Brigade in the First Division in the First Corps. Gibbon outfitted them with distinctive Hardee hats: black tall-crowned regulars’ headgear, adorned with a black ostrich feather and with one brim turned up and pinned with a brass eagle emblem. Their current brigadier, Solomon Meredith, was himself distinctive. A gaunt figure who stood six feet seven inches tall, Meredith was a veteran of many fields and known to his men as “Long Sol.” Mr. Lincoln liked to point out that Meredith was the only Quaker general he had in his army.17

  It was evident to both sides that a key to the McPherson’s Ridge position was the five-acre woodlot adjacent to the McPherson farm buildings that would serve as a kind of redoubt for whichever side held it. Colonel Gamble’s Yankee cavalrymen were being pressed back through the woods and fields under the rising pressure of Archer’s skirmishers pushing across Willoughby Run and starting for the western slope of the ridge. The experienced Archer was dubious, however, telling General Heth he thought his brigade, with fewer than 1,200 men, was “light to risk so far in advance of support.” Archer could detect very little of what might lie in wait in McPherson’s Woods along the ridge, and the division’s two supporting brigades, under Pettigrew and Brockenbrough, were actually not within supporting distance at all. Heth, far less experienced, was unconcerned and insistent, and ordered Archer to send his battle line forward.

  At the same time, on the eastern face of McPherson’s Ridge, John Reynolds was driving the Iron Brigade into action. “Forward men, forward for God’s sake and drive those fellows out of those woods!” he shouted. The brigade was coming up to the ridgeline from the southeast on a slant. “Forward, into line!” came the command, then “Forward, double-quick!,” the men running, pausing to load, then coming on again. The four leading Iron Brigade regiments, 1,450 men, reached the crest in an echelon formation, right to left, and collided with Archer’s battle line in a sequence of violent, thunderous explosions.

  Surprise was mutual, but Archer’s Confederates got in the first volley. The 2nd Wisconsin, first on the scene on the Federal right, was staggered by what a regimental historian described as a “murderous volley.” Perhaps seventy-five men went down, a quarter of the regiment. Lieutenant Colonel George Stevens was killed, then Colonel Lucius Fairchild was hit, his left arm so badly shattered that it would require amputation. Yet somehow the regiment gathered itself, returned fire, and continued its charge.18

  On the crest of the ridge, after the 2nd Wisconsin had passed him, John Reynolds turned in his saddle to follow the advance of the rest of the brigade. “As he did so,” his orderly Charles Veil explained, “a Minnie Ball struck him in the back of the neck, and he fell from his horse dead…. I have seen many men killed in action, but never saw a ball do its work so instantly as did the ball which struck General Reynolds….” The fatal shot had most likely come from the 7th Tennessee, either in that first deadly volley or immediately afterward. Sergeant Veil and two other staff men carried the general to the rear, found an ambulance, and in due course escorted the body to Taneytown. The general Mr. Lincoln had wanted to command the Army of the Potomac, the general who had committed that army to battle at Gettysburg, was dead after hardly an hour on the scene. Abner Doubleday, senior divisional commander, was notified that he was now in command on the battlefield.19

  The meeting engagement grew rapidly and spread, producing varying fortunes for both sides. The first misfortune would be General Archer’s. He found his earlier fears borne out—he had walked into a virtual ambush, he had no support, and he had almost no time to get his brigade in hand. When it crossed Willoughby Run a gap had opened between the 7th and 14th Tennessee on the left and the 1st Tennessee and 13th Alabama on the right, and General Archer, now commanding dismounted, proved to be too immobile to maintain effective control over his diverging forces.

  The death of Union Major General John F. Reynolds early in the fighting on July 1, as sketched by Alfred Waud. (Library of Congress)

  The momentum of the 2nd Wisconsin’s initial charge, supported by the 7th Wisconsin now coming up on its left, sent the Tennesseans in front of them stumbling back toward Willoughby Run. To the south of McPherson’s Woods was a large wheatfield, into which the 13th Alabama had advanced at an oblique angle. Alabama private W. H. Bird recalled, “all of the sudden a heavy line of battle rose up out of the wheat, and poured a volley into our ranks,… and they charged us, and we fell back to the ravine
again.” These were Yankees from the 19th Indiana, crossing the crest of McPherson’s Ridge at exactly the place and at exactly the moment they were most needed. Finally it came the turn of the 24th Michigan, the fourth in this Iron Brigade echelon of advance. The 24th overlapped the Confederate line on the south, and its colonel, Henry A. Morrow, opportunely curled his men around the open flank and struck into the rear of the Alabamians. As Private Bird remembered the scene, “it seemed to me there were 20,000 Yanks down in among us hallooing surrender … and of course I had to surrender.”

  In the hot, still air a dense blanket of battle smoke hung low among the trees and in the valley between Herr’s and McPherson’s ridges, making it difficult to separate friend from foe; the battle flags visible above the smoke clouds drew torrents of fire. The flag of the 14th Tennessee twice disappeared into the smoke, and twice it rose again. Archer’s men from all across the field instinctively sought the cover of McPherson’s Woods in which to make their escape. Before long they were tangled together without particular order or command, and the four Iron Brigade regiments swarmed into the melee. The 7th Tennessee’s Lieutenant Colonel’S. G. Shepard reported that Federals appeared “suddenly upon our right flank with a heavy force and opened upon us a crossfire.” Trapped Rebels by the score began to throw down their arms. Just across Willoughby Run the 2nd Wisconsin’s Private Patrick Mahoney spotted a Confederate officer and rushed at him to make a personal capture. He found his prisoner to be none other than Brigadier General James J. Archer.

  General Archer had brought some 1,200 men to Gettysburg that morning, and in perhaps an hour of fighting could count almost one-third of them dead, wounded, or captured and the rest in full retreat. Archer himself, exhausted and much ruffled, would be brought by a guard into General Doubleday’s presence. The two were acquaintances from the old army, and Doubleday was cordial: “Good morning, Archer! How are you? I am glad to see you!” Ignoring the outstretched hand, Archer snapped, “Well, I am not glad to see you by a damn sight!“20